I continue to discuss the podcast and relate themes to my own writing.

I love this final paragraph, of course:

Return of the Subjective – Science came into its own when it managed to refuse the subjective and embrace the objective. The repeatability of an experiment by another, perhaps less enthusiastic, observer was instrumental in keeping science rational. But as science plunges into the outer limits of scale – at the largest and smallest ends – and confronts the weirdness of the fundamental principles of matter/energy/information such as that inherent in quantum effects, it may not be able to ignore the role of observer. Existence seems to be a paradox of self-causality, and any science exploring the origins of existence will eventually have to embrace the subjective, without become irrational. The tools for managing paradox are still undeveloped.

This lecture by Kevin Kelly will lead me to update my essay. I contrast (as does JL Moreno) sociometry with “the physical sciences”, but there is no such thing, there is an evolving process of how we know stuff. I think Sociometry is on the list, and it could well include Sociometry 1933? (J.L. Moreno). Sociometry is the ultimate recursive device, though I have not heard it called that before. I imagine Kevin Kelly would be interested to learn about such a tool for the “subjective”, it is hard to grasp though, as Moreno’s writing is supposedly poor, or difficult. I think it is more that it is an experiential method, that requires experience as well as words. A bit like art.

Here is the list from the intro by Stuart Brand:

A particularly fruitful way to look at the history of science is to study how science itself has changed over time, with an eye to what that trajectory might suggest about the future. Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science…